Personal Awareness

Self-Awareness Helps You Find Happiness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Helps You Find Happiness

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My clients frequently ask me how to find happiness. Over the years I’ve noticed that a common characteristic of people who are happy is self-awareness.

Self-awareness is a deep understanding of who we are. It literally impacts how we treat ourselves and others and what kind of life we live. Let me give you a real world example to illustrate what I’m talking about.

Person A says he is a happy go lucky person that always is having a great time. He has a lot of friends and says he’s confident and an optimist. He lives a life that looks great to everyone on the outside but, when he has to think about it, Person A is deeply unhappy. He has unresolved issues in his life that are so difficult that he refuses to look at them. So person A appears happy on the outside but inside he is constantly struggling to ignore and cast aside the demons he carries. This type of person is not living a life of self-awareness because he won’t even begin the process of understanding who he is in order to move forward. He chooses instead to live a live of superficial happiness based on appearances.

Person B, on the other hand, also has issues that hurt him deeply and made him unhappy. He also appears happy to the outside world but his happiness comes from a very different place. Person B decided years ago to look at the things that brought him pain. He worked very hard to acknowledge his past and create a plan to move beyond the hurt. When person B is alone he feels genuinely happy because he has actually moved past the challenges in his past. This type of happiness is far more genuine because the person has literally worked through the things that made them unhappy. His happiness is real because it’s based on his deep self-awareness based on facing his hurts.

Genuine happiness comes from deep inside us. It is a level of existence that we achieve only when we work through the challenges from our past. I’m not suggesting that we live in the past, only that we acknowledge the things that hurt us earlier in life and then develop a plan to move forward.

Everyone deserves to live a life of genuine happiness, the kind that comes from deep inside. Those who are truly happy have left the burdens of the past in the past. Think about it as the difference between living your life with the burden of carrying a giant monkey on your back and never getting rid of it versus letting it go and living a much lighter and energized existence.

Self-awareness is not about being selfish or self-indulgent, it’s about understanding who you are and constantly working on becoming the best person you can be. Those who choose to be aware of whom they really are reap the benefits of living a genuinely happy life.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and find happiness?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and the House of Cards - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and the House of Cards

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I you aren’t actively building self-awareness your run the risk of spending your entire life carefully constructing a house of cards that could come tumbling down at any moment and for any reason. Thankfully, you don’t have to live precariously perched on the edge of disaster, there are much more balanced and fulfilling ways to live, such as:

  • Spending time finding out what you love doing in life.
  • Deciding which of your thoughts and behaviors genuinely reflect who you are deep inside.
  • Thinking, feeling and behaving positively.
  • Living genuinely and authentically.
  • Being happy with yourself deep down inside.
  • You don’t pretend you’re something you’re not.
  • You attract people who know and appreciate the real you.
  • Your life is in balance, no one area dominates all the time.
  • Your happiness isn’t based on defeating others or being on top of them.
  • Other people describe you as a self-aware, kind, wonderful person.
  • You help others feel great about themselves.

The idea in life is to have the self-awareness necessary to consciously move your life in a direction that reflects the real you rather than pretending you’re someone else. What will you do to avoid the house of cards and show the world the amazing authentic you?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Helps You Avoid Regret - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Helps You Avoid Regret

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A lot of people who lack self-awareness talk about living with no regrets and then go out and do stuff that is purely physical or superficial and doesn’t really help them grow as human beings. As you build your self-awareness, you’ll realize that physical or superficial pursuits are not the things that really matter in life, what people actually regret are things like:

  • Not having deep relationships with others.
  • Not saying, “I Love You,” more often to their loved ones.
  • Not pursuing their dreams.
  • Not having the courage to live life as themselves.
  • Not taking the time to work on the issues that held them back in life.
  • Not admitting mistakes.
  • Not being in touch with their emotions.
  • Not treating themselves and others well.
  • Not making the world a better place.
  • Not making life easier for others.
  • Not behaving with kindness and empathy toward all people.
  • Not letting go of fear.

You’ll notice that these types of regrets don’t have anything to do with superficial gratification, living recklessly, or being hooked on adrenaline, they refer to the quiet moments when we have to face who we are as people and decide whether we did everything in our power to live meaningfully.

Self-awareness allows you to live on a deeper level, where you understand what really matters in life rather than trying to fill yourself up with temporary placebos. It’s a way of living that goes below the surface and brings you greater satisfaction.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and avoid regrets in your life?

Cheers,

Guy

The Unlimited Opportunities Self-Awareness Offers - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

The Unlimited Opportunities Self-Awareness Offers

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Self-awareness offers you unlimited opportunities to create whatever kind of life you want. The more you understand yourself, the more you’ll be open to new and exciting ways of thinking and behaving rather than getting stuck looking at things from only one perspective. For example: If you’re having trouble finding a job, you can keep doing what you’ve always done or ask yourself questions like:

  • What do I really want to do in life?
  • What would bring me great meaning?
  • Who am I deep inside.
  • What floats my boat?
  • How can I share the real me with the world?
  • Who can I connect with as I begin my journey?
  • What kind of people care about the real me?
  • What is one thing I can do today to create an opportunity?

The wonderful thing about being human is that you don’t have to settle for the crumbs that come your way, you can deliberately work on shaping how you think and behave in relation to your environment. What will you do to create unlimited opportunities for yourself?

Cheers,
Guy

Self-Aware People Don't Say, "It's Not My Problem" - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware People Don’t Say, “It’s Not My Problem”

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You earnestly ask a colleague or employee who lacks self-awareness a question and he or she utters the words that destroy effective communication: It’s not my problem. Think of the power that one phrase has and how easily it completely eradicates any semblance of caring or courtesy. In one fell swoop, the person who says it demonstrates a lack of self-awareness and gives up on being helpful in any way or communicating effectively. These types of interactions happen all the time in our workplaces and can lead to all kinds of unwanted results including reduced morale, ineffective leadership, and lower productivity.

The reason, “It’s not my problem,” has such negative repercussions is that it stops all interaction and does so in a jarring, often disrespectful, manner. There are many variations on this phrase but they all make communication more difficult rather than easier. The challenge in the workplace is to find ways of saying yes instead of no as well as taking responsibility for communicating well rather than putting up walls. Here are ten positive alternatives to saying, “It’s not my problem.”

1.  Lets work on this together to find an answer.
2.  I’ll see what I can do and check back with you.
3.  What can I do to be helpful?
4.  Let’s look for resources.
5.  Who might have the skills to help us with this.
6.  What part can I play to make the situation easier?
7.  This is my concern too.
8.  I hear you and understand what you’re saying.
9.  I can help brainstorm ideas.
10.  Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do.

Think about all the words we utter in the workplace that create unnecessary communication roadblocks. These types of interactions don’t focus on the positive and, consequently, don’t lead to great results. Thankfully, we can shift that momentum by stepping outside our boxes and committing to communicate more effectively.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and promote positive communication in your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

How Do You Define Self-Awareness? - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

How Do You Define Self-Awareness?

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We are all at different stages of self-awareness. As you plan your journey, keep your own personal definition of self-awareness in mind. Don’t worry about what other people are doing or want you to do. Have confidence in your inner voice and grow in the areas that are meaningful to you.

Cheers,

Guy

Dating and Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Dating and Self-Awareness

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People often ask me why they keep dating the wrong people. The answer that they most often come up with after some self-exploration is that they are looking for people based on mistaken assumptions.

Most of us look for people that create a spark, that excite us into wanting to get to know them better. This method creates an initial euphoria that blinds us to understanding clearly what we want from relationships. We become so intoxicated with romance that we are unable to make rational decisions.

What I help people with is building self-awareness. When we understand who we are and what we love and need we tend to make better choices regarding relationships. If we don’t know ourselves very well or don’t like ourselves we tend to attract people that reinforce that. When we understand ourselves better and are healthier we tend to attract more positive people.

There really is no magic to this process. What’s been shown to work time after time is that people who are healthy attract other healthy people. All it takes is some work first on getting ourselves as healthy mentally and physically as possible. Then we attract people who admire us for the wonderful, healthy people we are.

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy